What does an audiovisual consultant actually do?

The title sounds abstract. The job is not: an audiovisual consultant sits on the design side of the table and makes the technology buildable, priceable and accountable - before anyone runs a cable.

Before anyone runs a cable

The work is briefs, budgets, schematic design, detailed specifications and tender documentation - audiovisual, ICT and venue technology considered together, coordinated with the architecture rather than bolted onto it. The output is paper, and the paper is the promise: a builder can price it, a contractor can build it, and the client can hold everyone to it.

What you actually receive

The deliverables follow the building’s own stages, and each one narrows the decisions:

• A return brief. Before anything is designed, the consultant writes back what they understand you to need - room by room, use by use. It is the cheapest chance to discover a misunderstanding.
• Budget advice, early. A realistic allowance while the project can still absorb it, rather than a shock at tender.
• Schematic design. What systems go where, how the rooms work, what the architecture must accommodate - riser space, ceiling depth, sightlines, power and pathways.
• Detailed design. Specifications, schedules, drawings and interfaces resolved to the point a contractor can build from them without guessing.
• Tender documentation. The package that goes to market, written so competing bids can be compared on the same basis.
• Tender assessment. Reading the responses, testing them against the specification, and advising which one actually meets the brief.
• Coordination through construction, then commissioning and handover. Someone answering the questions that arise on site, and witnessing that what was specified is what was delivered.

At Mater Dei College that is the exact sequence we have run: return brief, schematic design, detailed design, tender documentation, then assessment of the submissions.

Consultant, integrator, or both?

Worth being clear about, because it decides who you should call. An integrator supplies and installs the systems. A consultant designs and documents them, then holds the delivery to account, and is paid for advice rather than equipment.

The conventional wisdom is that these should always be separate: one firm writes the specification, others bid it, the lowest price wins. That is a sound way to buy a commodity. It is a poor way to buy a room.

A specification is a description of an intention. Once it goes to tender it has to be interpreted by people who were not present when the client explained what mattered. The winning bid is the cheapest reading of that document, and the cheapest reading is often the one that found a gap in it, or substituted a part that satisfies the clause but not the purpose, or simply did not know which of the client’s priorities were the non-negotiable ones. Nobody behaves badly. The intent just thins out at each handover.

We are built to avoid that. Our systems engineers, our architectural lighting product and software designers and our installation and commissioning team work for the same company, so the understanding formed in the first briefing workshop is still in the building on commissioning day. The client knows from the outset what they are getting, because the people describing it are the people who will build it. There is nowhere for us to hide between design intent and installed reality, and we treat that as a feature.

It is usually the more economical route as well, and it is worth being precise about why rather than simply asserting it: the design work folds into the delivery programme instead of being paid for twice, and you carry one company’s overhead rather than three.

Where a client’s procurement requires the design and the supply in separate hands, that is entirely legitimate and we will tell you which role we are bidding for. On Perth Modern School’s auditorium and Bob Hawke College we held the consulting role only, documenting work that others priced and built. At Piara Waters Senior High School and Mater Dei College we consulted on the documentation and hold the delivery contract as well.

Inside the project team

On Bob Hawke College’s performing arts spaces we worked alongside HASSELL Architects from the planning stage. Perth Modern School’s auditorium was designed with SITE Architecture to Department of Finance and Department of Education guidelines. In both cases the consultant’s role was the same: shape the rooms while they are still lines on a drawing, then document systems that deliver them.

When theatre is involved, the discipline changes

A theatre consultant is a specific kind of consultant. Audiovisual systems are only part of the brief: the discipline covers theatrical principles - sightlines, seating geometry and the stage-to-audience relationship - along with stage machinery, rigging and flying systems, variable acoustics, production lighting infrastructure, and the way a venue actually operates on show night. On Bob Hawke College and Perth Modern School, that is the role we held: theatre consultant first, with the audiovisual design inside it. Current theatre-consulting engagements at Mater Dei College, Piara Waters Senior High School and Como Secondary College continue the practice. More on that in venue and theatre technology.

Certification in writing

A consultant also carries the accountability the paperwork implies: certifying that proposed equipment meets contract requirements, and putting that in writing. It is the difference between advice and responsibility - and it is what project managers and builders are actually buying.

What it costs to leave it out

Projects without a consultant rarely fail loudly. They fail in small, permanent ways: a riser too shallow for the rack that was always coming, a control room that cannot see the stage, speaker positions decided by where the ceiling grid happened to land, a room that needs three remotes because nobody owned the interfaces between the packages. Each one was free to fix on a drawing and expensive to fix afterwards, and several cannot be fixed at all.

The other cost is comparability. Without documentation written to a single standard, tender responses cannot be read against each other, and the cheapest number wins by omitting the most.

When to bring one in, and what to ask

Earlier than feels natural. The cheapest change in any project is the one made on paper, and the most expensive audiovisual problems are the ones discovered after the walls close. If the architect is still sketching, the timing is right.

Four questions worth putting to any consultant you are considering: will you certify in writing that the delivered system meets the specification? Are you also bidding to supply it, and if so how is that handled? Who coordinates with the architect and the builder, and how often? And what documentation do we own at the end, in a form the next contractor can inherit?

If those answers matter to your project, that is where our consulting work starts - or arrange a technical consultation.